Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

17 Responses to “10 Mid-Week Reads”

Hank the Crank was just on Doomberg arguing FOR the minimum wage hike proposed by President Obama!

Because he just got back from Colorado, and he’s still high as a kite?

Nay.

Because it would stimulate the economy?

Uh, no.

Because 7 bucks an hour is a moral obscenity that virtually guarantees poverty, ill health, poor education, and a life of constant struggle?

Natch.

Because: Republicans are easily scapegoated and will suffer in the midterm elections if they don’t go along.

…

It is my sincere and everlasting wish that Hank ends his days incoherently screaming his rotten lungs out at the minimum wage nurses assistant who wipes his mouth/keister just a little too caustically at the 1% Home for the Permanently Deranged.

“As we previously reported, a number of the broadband provider’s customers have complained about ‘unwatchable’ buffering on the service since Verizon won a federal appellate court ruling allowing it to prioritise internet traffic….”

Not likely to happen and not likely to stop politicians interfering w/ businesses and business practices they don’t approve of either but it’s good to see the other knee jerk regardless; shows there’s still some reflex.

(Reuters) – Volkswagen’s top labor representative threatened on Wednesday to try to block further investments by the German carmaker in the southern United States if its workers there are not unionized.

The discussion appears to indicate that there is only the public stock market. The reality is that there is both a public and private stock market. Presumably the valuations of those cannot get too out of whack or the PE will IPO the privately held stock if public valuations are very high or would buy publicly held under-priced stock.

In the end, the total value of the stock market, public and private, should be about the same whether or not it is totally public or totally private or a combination. Large insitutions like pension funds and universities would transfer much of their public stock money over to PE if they believed that PE was under-priced relative to the public market. Why would they want to hold public stock at 18x (as an example) if a PE firm was offering to let them in on a similar firm for 10x?

The inflation means that comparing total medals won by country over the history of the Olympics is virtually meaningless. However, I think in general the number of medals won by individual athletes is still largely relevant as most of the medal inflation has occurred by adding sports instead of more events per sport. They have been adding some team events that can up the potential medal count per athlete (team figure skating, sliding etc.) but that also means that the athletes need to participate in multiple events in a single Olympics to win those extra medals, no small feat for endurance sports like XC-skiing or violent sports like freestyle skiing and alpine where small amounts of exhaustion or injury can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Bjorndaehlen just became the most decorated Winter Olympian. He won an individual gold and a team gold to do it at age 40 while skiing, and not winning, some challenging races in between. Very impressive – not much evidence of grade inflation there.

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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